When did Sega, as a console maker, reach the "point of no return"? [Archive]

sfchakan

07-08-2015, 01:36 AM

/equip head "Hindsight"
/ja "20/20" <me>

It starts with the Summer of 1994.

Cancel the 32X, citing it as a mistake, and commit full power to the Saturn in North America for 1995.

Notify developers and retailers of intent to launch the Saturn in North America early.

Launch the Saturn with at least a dozen games on day one, with support from third-parties.

EDIT: Also, a quality 3-D/2-D Sonic title by the first holiday season. What a no-brainer!

Continue existing Genesis and Game Gear sales and support into as late as 1998.

NEVER HIRE BERNIE STOLAR.

All of the above would have put them on stronger footing for the Saturn era and, at the very least, softened the huge losses they took.

Then, maybe then, they might have seen themselves through the Dreamcast era, It's quite possible they would have still exited the hardware race, though. At the very worst, continue Dreamcast support through 2002, until the PS2 and Xbox developed strong user bases.

Following the Dreamcast, ignore all furry fandom for Sonic. Don't do weird shit with Sonic during the 00s! For the love of god, never have him fall for a human girl!

Continue making the typical software they made during the Dreamcast era, live long and prosper as a unique developer that delivers unique experiences.

Establish themselves as a stronger PC developer and publisher by 2009, noticing all of the commotion and easy opportunities to make money with ports.

The Adventurer

07-08-2015, 01:37 AM

Sega's success was largely a fluke in timing, the Genesis launching during the NES's lifespan gave it a huge lead. I'm honestly not sure if Sega was every truly capable of capitalizing on their success, as everything after felt like they were coasting on inertia alone.

bb_hood

07-08-2015, 02:14 AM

The Sega CD was the beginning of the end.
It was expensive and it had alot of crap. Many games were just genesis games with cd audio. Even back then people thought the FMV games sucked.

celerystalker

07-08-2015, 03:11 AM

Honestly, I have no idea on this one. Sega is like a child genius who just can't put it all together as an adult. They've always been talented and eccentric, but rarely have they been able to bring together their great games with popular trends and a solid long-term hardware strategy.

Console gaming in the '90s began shifting away from trying to replicate the arcade experience and started going toward new formats with long-form RPGs and PC-style gaming. Sega has been able to come up with some great RPGs and strategy games over the years, but they've always relied on the strength of their arcade development. When what they were doing was less popular, they didn't make the adjustment, they had a haphazard hardware plan, and they remained extremely Japanese in style. The Genesis in the US was lightning in a bottle. Beyond that, Sega has been busy being brilliant, but not catering to the shift in design. Sega probably could have made brilliant FPS games or WRPGS, but they kept being Sega, making Sega games. They're wonderful and eccentric, and unfortunately just not mainstream after about 1993.

I started to love Sega AFTER the Genesis. I always felt like the Genesis was very average. It was afterward when it was clear that Sega was going to do things their own way, pass or fail, that I started to appreciate them for marching to the beat of their own drum. What makes them great to me is a huge part of what made them fail. I have no suggestions, as I wouldn't trade the Saturn and Dreamcast libraries for an also-ran group of FPS' and western-style games.

I really wish they'd just scale back expectations and produce Sega games on Sega hardware, not attempting to compete with what's new, but just going off in their own glorious direction, but that is entirely unrealistic.

Tanooki

07-08-2015, 09:17 AM

I don't think there ever was a point of no return. They never knew how to properly return on much of anything they did at a hardware level. The Genesis was sheer dumb luck that it paid off given how badly the SMS did. Had the cards fallen into place it just as easily could have been the TG16 and not the Genesis making the waves, and probably would have given they put out more of the good Japanese stuff that would have localized quite well.

Take the Genesis out of the picture, what successes did they really have that would have put them on a long term path of survival? Game Gear held out fine as a handheld, but what else? 32x they stupidly put out, and even more stupidly nuked fast breaking confidence of their base. The Saturn pops up early and it's not made for 3D which put it into trouble immediately outside of certain types of games it excelled at, and then they say stupid crap, break a lot more confidence, and it gets whacked badly. To somehow recover from their stupiditis, they instead overdose on it and kill the Genesis and GG which had been a revenue stream for them. And finally the Dreamcast, I had it, it was great, but it was doomed to fail when you see what it could do, the limited storage, and the rest against what would come 2 years later. Had the Genesis never taken off they'd have bit it earlier and stuck with the arcade and making games for others.

TheBenenator

07-08-2015, 09:27 AM

The Sega CD was the beginning of the end.
It was expensive and it had alot of crap. Many games were just genesis games with cd audio. Even back then people thought the FMV games sucked.

FMV can be used well, like in FF8's train hijacking scene cinematics and when they had you control Squall moving over the FMV background before smoothly transitioning into the in-engine stuff...but nobody knew how to yet. They should've left such experimentation to the 3DO developers, though.:puke:

The 32X should not have been made, simple as that. The Saturn should've had the DMA interrupt or whatever it's called so the CPUs could easily share data between them without s

The problem was with the culture at Sega in Japan, unfortunately. The success of the Genesis made them arrogant enough they forgot that Kalinske had already proven he knew what he was talking about regarding what would and wouldn't work, even though he's the one who was in charge of making it successful. I'll link the same thing I did in the "summer 1996" thread:

"One of the key reasons why I left Sega is when we had the opportunity to work with Sony, when [Sony Interactive CEO] Olaf Olafsson, [Sony Corporation of America president and CEO] Mickey Schulhof and I had agreed we were going to do one platform, share the development cost of it, share the probable loss for a couple years on it, but each benefit from the software we could bring to that platform,� he said. �Of course, in those days, we were much better at software than they were, so I saw this as a huge win. We went to Sony and they agreed, �Great idea.� Whether we called it Sega-Sony or Sony-Sega, who cared? We go to Sega and the board turned it down, which I thought was the stupidest decision ever made in the history of business. And from that moment on, I didn�t feel they were capable of making the correct decisions in Japan any longer.� -- former Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske, who resigned April 15, 1996. (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-02-23-is-sega-the-next-atari/)

Supposedly, Kalinske also fought against the early release.

That console became the Sony Playstation.

Even before that, when Sega of America first saw the Saturn, it was a clearly overcomplicated, too-large board with too many chips that weren't designed to work together, so they decided to suggest a simpler alternative:

"We went down the road to Silicon Graphics and met with [SGI founder] Jim Clark. They had bought MIPS Technologies, and they were developing a chipset for use in a game machine. We liked it, so we called up the Japanese guys to come take a look at it. The hardware guys came over, and they really pooh-poohed the whole effort. The chip was too big; there would be too much waste; lots of objections from a technical standpoint. It was upsetting to us, because we thought it was better in terms of speed, graphics, and audio.

"So after we had this meeting, I had to report back to Jim Clark, who was then Chairman of Silicon Graphics and tell him that SEGA wasn't going to be buying, and he asked, 'Well, what should I do now?' and I said, 'Well, there's this other game company up in the Seattle area. I think their name starts with an N.' And of course, he did. He went up there and sold it to them, and that, of course, became the foundation for the Nintendo 64." -- Tom Kalinske http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/04/21/ign-presents-the-history-of-sega?page=6

In short: they reached the point of no return when they became jealous of SoA's success and forgot to listen to who they thought of as the "little gaijin people".

calgon

07-08-2015, 11:55 AM

More than just a single issue, BUT if you had to isolate one really poor blunder that turned off many would-be Saturn owners it was releasing the 32x branded as the future, all while barely supporting it and tending to "the real future console" with the Saturn.

Just speaking on personal perspective

Tanooki

07-08-2015, 01:07 PM

Hah I never saw that bit of the story about the Sega/CGI people bit rolling into him telling them to talk to Nintendo. Good on him for roasting Sega of Japan for that one. They were stupid and arrogant to the bitter hardware end. Sometimes the stupid white little gaijin men may have a reason to be listened to.

Only imagine had Nintendo not been so arrogant as well and they went head to head against the PS1 with a the same hardware the N64 had more or less but based off a CD model. Things would have been drastically different and yet Sega still would have been a dead company walking at that rate.

goldenband

07-08-2015, 01:55 PM

if you had to isolate one really poor blunder that turned off many would-be Saturn owners it was releasing the 32x branded as the future, all while barely supporting it and tending to "the real future console" with the Saturn.

It's amazing how much damage a company can do to itself by releasing a major system and then failing to support it. I've always thought that the 5200 did Atari a lot more harm than people realize, and as a kid who got a 5200 for Christmas I was certainly pissed and disappointed when the console was dropped within months of my getting it.

(I was even more pissed and disappointed, of course, when both controllers were practically DOA out of the box, with fire buttons so stiff that Hulk Hogan would give himself tendonitis trying to make them fire, let alone a young kid.)

Consumers remember that stuff; it tends to turn a company into a punchline. I'm surprised Nintendo's gotten away with it twice (the Virtual Boy and 64DD).

Tanooki

07-08-2015, 08:24 PM

Yup and you all too often still see droning on about Sega of the 90s screwing so many of their most loyal fans who ate up and took it in the butt with the add-on devices, and then the Saturn bail out. No one ever seems to learn that much though. I guess maybe Nintendo did at least with Virtual Boy, but Sony, look at the Vita. They propped it up, talked a heap of smack, put out a lot of great stuff for maybe 18mo or so, and then it became a painful trickle into the crapper they're clearly not interested in anymore as even this E3 again showed.

sfchakan

07-08-2015, 10:39 PM

The Vita, so far, appears to be Sony's biggest misstep. The PSP was kind of mediocre for a while, but it eventually grew a pretty decent library.

Nintendo, imo, has made a number of big mistakes that people seem to gloss over.

The Virtual Boy is an obvious one.

Sticking with cartridges for the Nintendo 64 was another.

Hell, the Nintendo 64, GameCube, and Wii U have all received rather lackluster third-party support. A lot of very mediocre 3rd party games while their competitor's platforms have all received the majority of the hot hits. Their decisions to stay behind the curve on hardware and media have definitely hurt a lot.

Their decision to push a tablet controller while not having making it simple and cheap to port mobile games to their platform is mystifying. WTF were they thinking?

WelcomeToTheNextLevel

07-09-2015, 12:16 AM

I would agree that Sega's console future was salvageable in 1994, if not even later. The 32X came out in November 1994 so it could have been quietly yanked in late spring 1994 and the public would not even know about it. Heck, it could be yanked even after the CES announcement, with Sega saying something to the effect of "We're focusing on the Saturn as our future console." Sega would be damaged by this, but the damage would pale in comparison to what the 32X did. Instead of throwing major dollars at the 32X through the holiday season of '94 and first part of '95, don't even release the 32X. Stand behind the Genesis, and keep the CD going in the background. True, the CD had limited success, but it did have some great exclusive games. But the company's biggest asset was the Genesis. By late 1994, it had a very strong install base.

Here's a timeline that would likely give Sega a better future:

Let's start on May 9, 1994. Everything Sega's done prior to May 9, 1994 is done. The Genesis and Sega CD are their consoles. Game Gear is their portable system. They've even got the CDX out. SNES is just hitting its prime (which I consider to be the three full years 1994, 1995, 1996). 32X is in development but very few outside the business know: Summer CES 1994 hasn't happened yet.

By June 23, 1994: Cancel the 32X before CES. Don't announce it. Word will get out years later on retro game forums, but for '94 the secret is probably safe.

Remainder of 1994: Focus on the Genesis. Keep making Sega CD games in the background, but Genesis games are priority 1. SNES is coming out with expansion chips like the Super FX. Sega is falling behind technically, so it needs to go the expansion chip route for high end games. Sega's got the Sega Virtua Processor. Use it in several games over the 1994-1996 period. Get working on Sonic X-treme, but start its life as a Saturn game due out in '96.

1995: From January-August, keep focus on the Genesis. Announce "Saturnday" launch in March (they actually did this). Work with third parties and retailers before and during the September 2, 1995 launch. Go for at least 10 launch games, including a good VF2. Kill regional lockout. All Sega consoles from here on should be region free. Localize a majority of Saturn Japanese games. Some games should stay in Japan (i.e. dating sims, mahjong simulators, etc), but things like shooters and fighters need to be in the US. For the holiday season, push the Saturn, but maintain a focus on the Genesis as well, continuing to push out good titles. This is the last year that most focus goes to the Genesis. Start to shut down the Sega CD upon the Saturn's release.

1996: Push more Saturn games. Simplify the hardware and have the first price drop late in the year. Maintain Genesis support - this is the last year with a large number of Genesis releases. Overall, this year is mostly Saturn, but stand behind Genesis as a low cost option. With the Saturn out, this is the year to kill off the Sega CD for good. On Saturn, treat third parties well. This is also the year to release Sonic X-treme. It didn't make it in real life because it started on the Genesis, moved to the 32X, and finally was translated for the Saturn. Cut out even just the 32X bullshit, and Sonic X-treme can make it in stores in time for Christmas 1996. 3D Blast can be the Genesis Sonic swan song.

1997: DON'T SAY "THE SATURN IS NOT OUR FUTURE". Development of Dreamcast should be in earnest by now, and the buzz about the Dreamcast just starting. With third parties treated well, there should still be many cross-platform third party games that appear on the Saturn (And maybe a few exclusives). Keep the number and quality of first party Saturn games high. The 3D weaknesses of the system are becoming apparent, so emphasize some good 2D games as well. 2D wasn't totally dead by '97.

theclaw

07-09-2015, 12:45 AM

FMV can be used well, like in FF8's train hijacking scene cinematics and when they had you control Squall moving over the FMV background before smoothly transitioning into the in-engine stuff...but nobody knew how to yet. They should've left such experimentation to the 3DO developers, though.:puke:

The 32X should not have been made, simple as that. The Saturn should've had the DMA interrupt or whatever it's called so the CPUs could easily share data between them without s

The problem was with the culture at Sega in Japan, unfortunately. The success of the Genesis made them arrogant enough they forgot that Kalinske had already proven he knew what he was talking about regarding what would and wouldn't work, even though he's the one who was in charge of making it successful. I'll link the same thing I did in the "summer 1996" thread:

That console became the Sony Playstation.

Even before that, when Sega of America first saw the Saturn, it was a clearly overcomplicated, too-large board with too many chips that weren't designed to work together, so they decided to suggest a simpler alternative:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/04/21/ign-presents-the-history-of-sega?page=6

In short: they reached the point of no return when they became jealous of SoA's success and forgot to listen to who they thought of as the "little gaijin people".

No matter how I look at it, pushing Virtua Fighter as their flagship title in the west only added to Saturn's troubles.

SparTonberry

07-09-2015, 01:23 AM

Consumers remember that stuff; it tends to turn a company into a punchline. I'm surprised Nintendo's gotten away with it twice (the Virtual Boy and 64DD).

I'd say VB was excusable for trying to be something new and different (and in the early '90s virtual reality was the big thing people were talking about. I recall reading in magazines back then about a Sega VR unit too, but they canceled that.)
Also it's said that VB was horrendously rushed to market, and was why Gumpei Yokoi resigned. We can only wonder what he might've intended if he had been allowed to work on it more. (Nintendo should've waited the few years it's said they would've needed to to make color feasible.)

32X is a device it's harder to find sympathy for as it's hard to imagine why it would've seemed like a good idea to release, especially with Saturn coming.
Sega CD it's easier to forgive because CD was clearly the next step in gaming and maybe many devs just weren't quite ready for (so we got the infamous FMV games and slightly-upgraded cart ports that brought the console down).

64DD probably doesn't get talked about because it was constrained to a limited Japanese release. Though Japan was the worst-selling territory for the N64, the larger US install base probably means they'd have sold only maybe 50k instead of 15k in Japan. :P )

Gentlegamer

07-09-2015, 02:49 AM

Don't believe anything Kalinske said without at least ten corroborating witnesses.

Th3 hoff

07-09-2015, 03:27 AM

When sega lost the trust of retailers they where done.

sfchakan

07-09-2015, 03:41 AM

Don't believe anything Kalinske said without at least ten corroborating witnesses.

You might be interested in reading this thread (http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?29801-Is-Tom-Kalinske-full-of-it).

Gentlegamer

07-09-2015, 03:55 AM

You might be interested in reading this thread (http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?29801-Is-Tom-Kalinske-full-of-it).

I was so interested, I posted in that thread when it was made. ;)

Tanooki

07-09-2015, 02:15 PM

1995: From January-August, keep focus on the Genesis. ...snip.

I think even your what if...list here is a push a real dream. The Genesis wouldn't have propped them up, if anything it would have caused a little bit of a split. Nintendo and much more so Sony still would have buried them even if they did the marketing and so forth of the Saturn correctly. The system was a disaster that companies didn't like either due to the weak output for 3D which they moved towards and because it is a nightmare to code for. Sure you can say this game or that game, but anything they did have was nothing on what Nintendo and Sony could push, sure it would have made already netted Sega fanboys happy but pulling in new blood it would not have at all in the numbers they needed. The Japanese office was stupid and arrogant, hated on the US office especially since they were right and proven so which dishonorably shamed and made their dumb moves public. I do agree the 32X should have never been born to retail. Given the garbage pricing on Virtua Racing at $100, you'd think they'd have tried to make something a little more reasonable and shovel the 32X games over that chip instead. Even if the games due to bulk could have been done in the $70 ish range, they'd have fared better than moving that 32x turd and pulling it so fast ruining their good will with the fans. Anyone can dream about what if this or that, but the laundry list of dumb crap the home office did for a great many years was not going to be reversed as a total labotomy for the lot of them was not going to happen.

Off on that 2 times over thing side topic with Nintendo. They got away with it because the VB was virtual reality which was huge at the time, not a good excuse but it worked sadly. They should have been punished for breaking out with it too early and half baked from what was intended. The 64DD though that is a pass, it was Japan only and stayed there. Had that come to the US with those small discs and weak(mostly) library for it, it would be fair game, but they buried it at home.

Ogreatgames

07-09-2015, 04:54 PM

I do not see where Sega could not do a turn around or have ever reached a point of no return. That said, some games released were better than others. However, in this day and age with android os, & the cost of production dropping (not talking about AAA titles here) they can chose to do a turn around. It will not be easy and it may require plenty of investors like through kickstarter or some other crowd funding but ultimately it can be done. :D

Tanooki

07-09-2015, 05:21 PM

They won't likely do it as they love to shovel things of the old style out to other makers of third rate emulation like ATGames, but it is an interesting idea. Sega has put up some of their DC games, arcade and more up on Android. With how cheap it can be to get to market for sale a potent android box (see Nvidia Shield micro-console) I could see them probably doing fairly well if they made their own Sega box again with a good controller and the rest while having a few free games downloaded to it already, and then having it take google play to peddle some more. Sega could help bump sales having more stuff shoveled over from their past and keep it exclusive to the system. It's all hypothetical nonsense but it would be amusing if someone from the past like that with a system took another stab at it that way taking the cheap route.

Gentlegamer

07-09-2015, 07:23 PM

Very broadly speaking, the same things that sank Sega are those that have continued to haunt Nintendo.

Sony (and later Microsoft) was able to get big support from influential third-parties and the successful market expansion lead to more "cinematic" type games, starting with Metal Gear Solid and even FF VII. Nintendo has largely been able to keep its core fans (while capturing a bit of a fad market with the Wii that didn't stick around or make money for third-parties), and has always been much more soundly run than Sega. Sega was hit with a bad situation, but there was really nothing it could do to stay in the game because of the environment had rapidly changed and didn't have the reserve cash like Nintendo to finance itself. The types of games Sega make, even the inventive stuff on Dreamcast, are out of place in the more "casual AAA" market that has been expanding since the PlayStation era.

There's part of me that wishes Nintendo and Sega were still driving the home console market if that meant that games stayed more "gamey" while adding some nice production values, but didn't reach the yearly sequel trap of mediocrity like Ubisoft with Assassin's Creed. Additionally, we now see the de-evolution of games following consoles going online, enabling shipping broken games and incomplete games to gouge for DLC and pre-order bonuses. I think that would be the world where games like Darksiders and Dragon's Dogma would be considered profitable successes, and games like Metal Gear Solid could still come out.

Sega may have been able to thrive in such a world if it had survived to continue shaping it. But the seeds of its destruction were laid with Sony and the PlayStation, even without its own financial mismanagement.

WelcomeToTheNextLevel

07-09-2015, 10:23 PM

When sega lost the trust of retailers they where done.

They didn't lose retailer trust until the 32X bombed. Saturn surprise launch really hurt them on top of that.

A.C. Sativa

07-14-2015, 03:49 PM

The Saturn launch, or really the Saturn period. They could have recovered from the 32X fuckery (which I think is overstated because no one bought the damn thing anyway) had they not butchered the launch, but the Saturn had other serious issues too. The $400 price tag for one, but the architecture made it so hard to program for that most 3rd companies didn't even bother with it. No games means it's going to bomb no matter what.

Gamevet

07-14-2015, 09:52 PM

Don't believe anything Kalinske said without at least ten corroborating witnesses.

I believe his track record speaks for itself. Who else could turn LeapFrog into a massive seller, Barbie back into relevance and market a muscle bound plastic doll named He-Man to pop-culture status?

dendawg

07-15-2015, 03:22 AM

but the architecture made it so hard to program for that most 3rd companies didn't even bother with it.

And yet, It was moderately successful in Japan, where 3rd party support was abundant in spite of the architecture.

homerhomer

07-16-2015, 01:26 AM

Edmond Dantes

07-16-2015, 07:51 AM

It surprises me how many people say the Sega CD shouldn't have been made. The Sega CD was itself a good idea, just Sega never really supported it and they pushed all the wrong aspects.

I mean, think about Silpheed--a game that at the time was seen as competition with Nintendo's Star Fox. That game was made possible by the Sega CD, because all the 3D objects you see are actually an FMV sequence running in the background, with hitboxes programmed in the appropriate location.

Personally, if I were running Sega, I would've released the Sega CD, but then aggressively supported it. I wouldn't exactly stop making games for the Genesis, but I would strongly advise licensees that if they ever made a dual-platform game, the CD version should always have more content than the cartridge version (like how Earthworm Jim CD has a new level), while having a few awesome games be CD exclusive, in order to king of wean people over onto the add-on. In addition, I would release a combination console like the JVC X'eye for people who don't already own a Genesis but are considering getting one, or for the sake of the space/power outlet savvy. Also Sega CD games should've come in cases smaller in size, more comparable to what DVDs come in today, rather than the humongous ones they came in.

The 32X though, that was truly a bad idea and should have never even been on the drawing board.

..... hmm.... now I really want to build a time machine AND a mind control device, so I can go back in time and prevent Sega from being stupid.

SparTonberry

07-16-2015, 11:26 AM

I tried Silpheed. The problem is that it's kind of inconsistent with what objects are background and what needs to be dodged.

Otherwise, seemed fun but it wasn't Starfox.
It was actually a remake/sequel to an '80s 2D shmup for PCs (originally for like PC-88, I think. But I think there was a western DOS version). Supposedly it's notable thing was that it had human-sounding voice (and not the robo voice typically heard on 80s sound hardware). Though sound cards on PCs were an expensive add-on then, so I read they needed to send out tapes to demo the sound quality.

Alianger

07-16-2015, 12:25 PM

I started to love Sega AFTER the Genesis. I always felt like the Genesis was very average. It was afterward when it was clear that Sega was going to do things their own way, pass or fail, that I started to appreciate them for marching to the beat of their own drum. What makes them great to me is a huge part of what made them fail. I have no suggestions, as I wouldn't trade the Saturn and Dreamcast libraries for an also-ran group of FPS' and western-style games.

Yet you could've still had that without them failing commercially, in fact you probably would've seen more experimental stuff if they hadn't.

celerystalker

07-16-2015, 12:41 PM

Yet you could've still had that without them failing commercially, in fact you probably would've seen more experimental stuff if they hadn't.

How's that, then? The message of that post was that Sega's great stuff was no longer mainstream, and couldn't support the needed console sales. How could I have all that stuff Sega made that flopped hard and didn't get any praise until a decade later AND have Sega succeed? Somehow grant them extra developmental resources that they didn't have? Developing more also-ran platformers on the Genesis hardly gives them extra resources or success. Killing the 32X before it starts I get. But that's the only cut I see that frees up resources for Sega to have tried other things to gain traction with the Saturn without compromising the great games they did make.

Tanooki

07-16-2015, 01:11 PM

It surprises me how many people say the Sega CD shouldn't have been made. The Sega CD was itself a good idea, just Sega never really supported it and they pushed all the wrong aspects.

Personally, if I were running Sega, I would've released the Sega CD, but then aggressively supported it.
The 32X though, that was truly a bad idea and should have never even been on the drawing board.

..... hmm.... now I really want to build a time machine AND a mind control device, so I can go back in time and prevent Sega from being stupid.

See I don't agree about Starfox, they're not the same in the least bit, but this rest of this entirely. Sega even halfassing it in the states because of the corrupt Japanese office proved to do well and had some really stellar games that I feel put it well on par with the SNES, and then some when you figure the FMV aspects and things they did with true CD audio. If that had been aggressively pushed and the idiots overseas hadn't sandbagged it they would have been a serious threat to Nintendo because Sony tried to screw NIntendo, Nintendo screwed them and Philips, and had NO optical drive to speak of until the Gamecube. Sega would have really busted their balls over it and taken some good support if not total franchises away from Nintendo (like Sony did on PS1.) The 32X though, that was a good case of the stupids. They needed to either kill it, or delay it and learn a way to either do one of two things with the premise which would be 1) wait and make it cheaper to be in a cart and less than the $100 Virtua Racing which was damn good, or 2) use the 32X as an integrated cart in the Genesis slot to work in tandem with the SegaCD to have an early 3D based CD game system.

Alianger

07-16-2015, 03:36 PM

How's that, then? The message of that post was that Sega's great stuff was no longer mainstream, and couldn't support the needed console sales. How could I have all that stuff Sega made that flopped hard and didn't get any praise until a decade later AND have Sega succeed? Somehow grant them extra developmental resources that they didn't have? Developing more also-ran platformers on the Genesis hardly gives them extra resources or success. Killing the 32X before it starts I get. But that's the only cut I see that frees up resources for Sega to have tried other things to gain traction with the Saturn without compromising the great games they did make.

Maybe I misunderstood your post, I'm just saying that if they did most things right hardware and marketing-wise and kept up with getting respectable versions of the third party hit games released on the Saturn, then it's not like that would've led to you not getting their more experimental/innovative software from that period but rather the opposite.
I also think some of the great cult hit games like Panzer Dragoon Saga could've been mainstream hits if the console was already selling well since the mid 90s. I certainly would've bought games like that if they were on a more popular system back then. Personally I was almost unaware of the Saturn's existence after '96 or so, though being a kid I didn't exactly do my research and instead listened to what other kids were talking about in school (PS1, N64, PC), went with the PS1 after renting it (w/ Tekken and Tomb Raider IIRC) and then subscribed to PS magazine (mainly for the demo discs but the point is I didn't get steady news about other systems for a few years).

Bhris

01-27-2016, 02:53 AM

I guess most agree it was the 32X that did Sega in.

I remember seeing the ads for Sega Saturn with Ice Cube wearing Saturn rings around his head and just thought it looked weird. Then there was the price. No Sonic. This didn't seem like a console from the same company that made Sonic and had created all those cool commercials. When the 32X was announced, despite not having Sonic, I felt like THIS was a Sega system. Mortal Kombat II, Daytona, and Star Wars were some big names that I felt were bigger draws than whatever was announced for Saturn, like Clockwork Knight.

They should never have put out the 32X and focused on aggressively marketing the hell out of the Saturn as the successor to the Genesis legacy.

That said, I love Sega for it's underdog status and it's quirky iconic games. The Genesis wasn't that great of a system, having the most limited color palette of the three 16-bit systems but their US marketing team made you think you were in some exclusive club by owning a Genesis.

Tokimemofan

01-30-2016, 10:56 AM

The failure to include DVD Player capability in the Dreamcast. That choice forced price cutting to remain competitive and unlike nintendo they lacked a life boat.

retro junkie

01-30-2016, 02:37 PM

What I would have liked to have seen was the 32x built into a new Genesis console. The Nomad becoming their portable. Skipping the Saturn and focusing on the Dreamcast as being their future. Supporting the Genesis hardware until the Dreamcast. I was there, as a fan, through all of the hardware clutter and I would have felt better if this had been their game plan. Games for the Saturn could have been pushed to the Dreamcast. Their success was the 16bit years and I don't think they knew how to get past that. Sega had a strong arcade presence and when the arcades faded, so did Sega. I would have enjoyed a longer lifespan of the Genesis hardware. Now that I am a retro gamer looking back, that would have been awesome.

WelcomeToTheNextLevel

07-15-2021, 02:53 AM

That wouldn't have actually worked out in the mid-1990s though. The market wanted next-generation 32+ bit, 3D hardware. Staying 16-bit only was never going to work all the way through 1998.

That being said, I've done more research in the 6 years since I posted this and came to the conclusion that the Saturn's failure was Sega's fault but the Dreamcast's failure was EA's fault. EA said they wouldn't support the Dreamcast until it sold a million units. That's all well and good, but the Dreamcast crossed a million units in December 1999, three months after its launch. Then EA QUIETLY reneged on their promise and refused to support the Dreamcast at all. No big announcement of "we're not supporting the Dreamcast", they just refused to release games. They'd already missed the window for 2000-model releases but could have come out with 2001-model franchises for the Dreamcast (and, still, the PS2). Yes, many of the Sega Sports games were better but it didn't matter in the consumers' eyes, by then EA Sports games were the gold standard. Yes, the PS2 would have still stomped the Dreamcast, and Gamecube and Xbox as well.

I do know that EA said "every dollar we give to Dreamcast development is one we can't give to PS2 development", yet they were still developing for PS1, N64, and later Xbox and Gamecube. I can't think of a year they developed for the PS2 without developing for at least two additional consoles. They supported the N64, a cartridge-based system, until the 2002 cycle, by which time the thing was basically discontinued.

If EA didn't want to develop for the Dreamcast, they shouldn't have given that whole "million units" thing. That was a real screw-up on EA's part. And it's not like EA was short on resources, they made a conscious decision to QUIETLY renege on their promise.